cardcaddyhttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com
Stack your deck - anywhere, anytime!Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:28:17 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngcardcaddyhttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com
Building your email list, Part 3https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/building-your-email-list-part-3/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/building-your-email-list-part-3/#respondThu, 15 Mar 2018 13:22:31 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1927I’ve been gearing up for a Kickstarter for our new Dice Tower product soon and have been bulking up our email list in preparation. In Part 1, I went over an unsuccessful way to build your list through a giveaway, and in Part 2, did an overview of a more successful process using Facebook leads. In this post, I’ll discuss the first week’s results from another giveaway process for collecting emails. TLDR: Using Gleam, this giveaway has been successful so far with a cost per email of $0.50 and lots of secondary engagement.

Why email and what’s an email worth?

So, I’ve had a couple of comments/questions on previous posts about why I’m focusing so much on email before my Kickstarter. Why email? – lots of blogs and my own (limited) Kickstarter experience indicate that you’ve got to plan on bringing in 2/3 of your funding for your campaign, and email is a great way to find and inform potential backers of your project. How much is an email worth and what is a successful email collection effort? Just doing some back of the envelope calculations: an average backer pledge level is $25, so the maximum cost of an email is tied to that value. How you determine that is all related to the percentage of people on your list who end up becoming backers. So, for instance, if 10% of your email list ends up backing, I’d say the most you’d want to pay is $2.50 per email.

My first attempts at doing a giveaway to collect emails weren’t very successful at a cost of $3 to $4 per email and little to no engagement otherwise. Doing a couple of Facebook targeted lead generation promotions was a lot better, and after doing 4 of them, I’ve gotten my cost per lead down to $1.25. Now we’re getting down to a 5% backer conversion rate for the email list, which is more realistic. My current consumer email list has an open rate of 41% and a click rate of 8%, so I feel OK with a potential conversion rate of 5%.

Setting up the giveaway

I had been seeing lots of giveaways on the Boardgame Giveaways Group on Facebook, so that got me back into the idea of doing one to collect emails. Since my first effort did not have a good “gateway” and collection process, I looked at the various apps available to facilitate giveaways and settled on Gleam.io and subscribed for the $50/month package. I was a bit hesitant at first for yet another monthly service fee – I’ve already got so many other service subscriptions at $50 apiece for all the other segments of the business and they really start to add up, but long story short, it was been worth it.

I set up the this giveaway for a Card Caddy 5-pack to run for a month. It’s got an MSRP of $27, but a cost to me of around $5. During the setup, the interface asked me how many prizes I was giving away and I entered 5, thinking more people would enter if they saw more prizes, but that did not show up anywhere on the public portal, so next time, I will probably just do one prize. As lots of people have noted, you don’t need your own product to do a giveaway – just offer an Amazon gift card or some other relevant prize if you don’t have inventory of your own yet. Shipping for each prize is $5 max, so I’m in for a total of $50 and when you include the Gleam fee, it’s $100 total. I’m a week in, so I’ll just adjust the totals by 1/4.

In the table above are all of the entry processes and counts of these actions. I’ll go through them roughly in order of importance to me:

Email signups – this is what it’s all about. Of the 60 signups, 4 immediately unsubscribed. But for an amortized expenditure of $25 for the week and over 50 emails, that’s right where I want to be. And the emails automatically integrate with Mail Chimp, my mail service.

Visit a page – this goes to our product shopping page. We’ve had 3 sales that I can directly track to visitors from this giveaway, and possibly 2 more at an average of $12 per sale. It’s a nice added benefit.

Watch a video – this goes to the overview video on Youtube. I’m really just trying to boost our total views there to hit that magic 10,000 views mark. It’s slow going, but every little bit helps.

Refer a friend – always a good idea to have an easy way for people to tell their friends. Haven’t been able to see if any referrals come through, though.

Facebook and Instagram entries – I still don’t exactly understand how these work. the Gleam interface won’t allow a direct “like” or “follow”, but it does seem that around 1/2 of these entries end up liking my account on those platforms. There have been around 10 new followers from this giveaway who have become fairly engaged with new content, too.

Twitter entries – I struggle with Twitter and ways to make it work for my business, so these types of entries are mainly “feel good” when I see that stuff is happening on my Twitter account.

How to publicize your giveaway

There are a couple of good Facebook groups that are primary focused on gaming giveaways, or have special days or processes to post your giveaway, so be sure to join them and READ THE GROUP RULES! And of course, post it to all of your social media accounts.

This is a good listing of free sites to post your giveaway on – ironically put together by a Gleam competitor. I put a listing on 8 of them. Other than Reddit, the first 4 drove the most traffic to the giveaway landing page (I’m not a big Reddit fan – for supposedly being the “wild west” of the Internet, I find it very restrictive with heavy-handed often automated moderators). Other than the above, I didn’t do any other promotion.

Conclusions

I’ve been really pleased with this latest giveaway, getting emails for around $0.50 with a good bit of secondary engagement and some extra sales. Some items I’ll keep an eye on or do differently next time are:

Run a new giveaway each week. Most of the free sites I linked to above don’t allow multiple postings of the same giveaway, so as soon as your listing drops a few days into history, it’s out of sight. So, just redoing the same giveaway each week, I’ll be able to post a new one each week.

track the performance of these new emails. Even though the Facebook lead generation was more expensive in terms of cost per email, I have more confidence that they are more closely aligned with my product. For this email collection effort since I used a wider process for the publication of it, there are likely to be a higher percent of people who may just like free stuff, but would never buy any of my products. So, I’ll track their open rate and backer conversion to see how they perform.

Have you done a giveaway or other email collection effort? Love to hear your input!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/building-your-email-list-part-3/feed/0Gleam snapshotcardcaddyCaptureIntroducing the Dice Tower, by Card Caddyhttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/introducing-the-dice-tower-by-card-caddy/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/introducing-the-dice-tower-by-card-caddy/#commentsTue, 06 Feb 2018 16:04:32 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1913When we show the Card Caddy (the only playing card case that turns into a discard tray) at trade shows and cons, we almost always get asked if we have a dice tower, too. In fact, we’ve had a dice tower in the works for awhile and I think we’re finally ready to unveil our design. For those of you who may not know, a dice tower is a structure used by tabletop gamers to ensure fair rolling of dice and often keep the dice under control once rolled. Dice are dropped into the open top of the tower, and inside are a series of baffles, ramps or other obstacles that the dice impact on, changing their orientation. The dice come out the bottom and are often corralled in tray or pen so that they don’t fly off the table or into the game board.

We didn’t come up with the dice tower idea, and in fact the idea has been around for a few thousand years, at least since Roman times. This article is a great history of the dice tower – the Vettweiss-Froitzheim Dice Tower mentioned in the article is an especially cool artifact and could easily be used in today’s gaming environment – I even think there are some people who make replicas of it for gaming.

So, we didn’t invent the dice tower and there are already many cool ones already on the market. Many are hand-crafted from solid wood – Dog Might Games makes some really nice ones. Or this one – a resin cast head of Cthulhu – is a piece of art by itself. So what did we think we could add to this product to make it unique and worthwhile? Well, we stuck to the core design elements of the Card Caddy – modular, multi-purpose and mobile – and came up with what we think is a cool, new contribution to the dice tower “architecture”.

You can watch our Youtube video (around 8 minutes) that goes through all of the features of our new dice tower or a quick overview of around 1 minute, but if you’re like me, you like to read articles with pictures, too. One important thing to note is that the images below are 3D-printed prototypes – the final versions will have a smooth glossy finish.

Dice Tower closed (left) and open (right two pieces)

In the picture above, we’ve got the Dice Tower in the closed configuration on the left. Here’s it’s just a box, but that’s exactly what you want to keep your dice in. It’s fairly compact (there are dice towers out there that totally collapse flat) and very sturdy so you can put it in your game box or backpack without worrying about it getting smashed or damaged. The dimensions of a closed dice tower is around 4.5 x 4 x 3 inches and there’s lots of room on the sides for your decoration like stickers, painting or engraving.

The right two pieces in the picture above show what you get when the dice tower is open. In the center of course is the dice tower – you drop in the dice in the top and they impact on ramps inside – there are small ridges on the ramps to add extra randomization. I don’t know where my other d10 is, but you can see it comfortably fits a standard 7 polyhedral dice set. (I really need to upgrade my dice from my original D&D set). The space between the ramps is a little over 1 inch, so that’s the limit on the largest dice you can use.

Since we like to have multi-purpose products, on the very right of the above image shows the lid which also serves as a peg-and-hole score pad. It’s a little hard to see the details, but you can use it to score up to 999 points – there are 100 holes along a track, and then a column of 100’s tally.

Above you can see some images of the scorepad – there is storage built in the back for the pegs, 6 all together. On the right, shows the ramp that you take off the face of the dice tower to open it up. It also doubles as a prop for the scorepad so players across the table can see what’s going on.

So in my design, I wanted to get more ramps into the single dice tower, but due to the limitations of injection molding, I was only able to get in two ramps. I think one dice tower gets you plenty of bounces, but, the great thing about our design is that you can stack multiple dice towers to keep adding more ramps (and more sound!). Below we’ve got a double tower, and there’s no limit on how many you can stack up. And then what’s cool is that you can use the leftover tray and lid as standalone storage boxes, too (on the right in the image below).

Double Tower with Scorepad lid and tray used as a storage box on right

We also realized that you can use multiple dice tower parts to create new configurations. Below shows a splitter set-up: a single feed being split into two trays. I’m not sure what current game out there you could use this for, but there could be some cool application like any dice that end up on the right don’t count or have a different impact. In theory, I think you could keep splitting out for as many dice towers as you have (I’ve only printed out three right now, but have more on order, so I’ll test that idea when I get some more).

Dice tower splitter – single feed to two trays

Conversely, you can also set up to have multiple feeds collecting into a single tray. I can see this being used for multiple players rolling together for an action. Again, you can keep stacking them up and splitting/combining, but in this case I think it would get too top-heavy after awhile.

Multi-feed to single tray

So you play a game with LOTS of dice and that little tray just won’t contain them all. I’m an old fan of Axis and Allies and there are times when you’ve got to roll handfuls of dice – usually into the box top. If you still want the satisfaction of a dice tower, we’ve got you covered. You can flip over the trays and use them as risers to get your dice tower to hook over the side of the box top, seen below.

Dice tower and box top

So, what do you all think? What can we add or change to make your gaming experience better? I’ll wrap up for now with the inscription from the Roman dice tower discussed above: “Use it and live lucky”!

Want to get informed when we go live? Sign up for our email list and you’ll be the first to know!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/introducing-the-dice-tower-by-card-caddy/feed/1DT2cardcaddy20180201_122307.jpg20180205_21231420180205_21270120180205_212754.jpg20180206_105154Building your email list, Part 2https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/building-your-email-list-part-2/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/building-your-email-list-part-2/#commentsMon, 29 Jan 2018 20:04:24 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1908In Part 1, I discussed am unsuccessful effort to build my email list for my planned Dice Tower Kickstarter campaign. In spite of a snarky comment when I posted the bad results on a Facebook group, I decided to share the results of some continuing efforts. Here, I follow up with a successful campaign.

TLDR: broad ads driving traffic to an external email collection page did not work for me; making a more specific audience and using Facebook lead generator ad type worked much better. Acquisition costs of around $1.50 per email were achieved, getting down to $0.50 per email when profit from sales from new email subscribers were included.

Since my first post about 2 months ago, I’ve tried a number of test ads on Facebook for a dollar or two per day that I ended up shutting down usually after a week with no or minimal returns.

I generally ran the following ad types with some tweaks to see if anything moved the needle:

Objective – drive traffic to a dedicated email signup form on MailChimp

Creative – video (usually) or image carousel. Videos or images are selected from those posted in past and have the most engagement

Hook: sign up for our newsletter and get 30% off your first order

Here’s an example of the best performing ad in that area. According to Facebook, over the course of 5 days, I spent around $10, got 25 clicks for $0.40 per click. I’d pay 40 cents per email no problem, but the problem was that I only got 2 emails through the dedicated MailChimp email signup form from those “25 clicks”, so it really turns out to be $5 per email. One of those new signups did use the 30% off coupon for an order that I automatically send out to new subscribers on this list, and I had about $5 in profit from that order, so if you count that as part of the email collection campaign, my cost per email goes down to $2.50, still too high.

Facebook has a specific ad type for lead collection. I had been reluctant to use it since I didn’t know where the emails went, but after researching it, I found you can integrate it with Mailchimp, so any emails collected through the ad go right into your Mailchimp (they also integrate with other email systems). So I gave it a shot and it has been much better. I also narrowed my audience to specific collectible card game players and increased the discount to 50% for the sign up coupon.

For this campaign, the results were much better. For $14 for seven days, I got 9 emails for around a $1.50 per email. The profits from the sales garnered from the 50% off coupon users was around $10, so now we’re getting down under 50 cents per email. What’s good about a working ad is that it starts garnering more comments and engagement organically, so letting your ad “soak” longer seems to build its strength.

What seemed to work this time:

Using FB’s lead collection ad type

Narrowing the audience

Increasing the sign-up coupon discount

as a good scientist, I should try to isolate the effect of each of those parameters independently, but for right now, I’m happy to have found a somewhat successful strategy. So, I’m going to renew this ad, and bump up to $5 per day for another week and see if the results scale up proportionally. Stay tuned for updates!

UPDATE (two weeks after original post) like I said above, I upped the daily limit to $5 and let the ad run for another week and the results in terms of cost per lead pretty much stayed the same. The cost per lead from Facebook turned out to be $1.56 per lead, and $0.53 when I applied profits from sales trough my website from leads who used the 50% off coupon. Some good, and unsurprising, demographic results were that the cost per lead were much lower for males in the 18-25 age range, and were increasingly more expensive for older brackets of women, getting up to over $3.00. The focus on various collectible card game interests seemed to work well, so next time around I’ll try to target that sweet spot of younger males.

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/building-your-email-list-part-2/feed/1grow-your-email-marketing-list-800cardcaddyBuilding your email list with a contest – a case studyhttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/building-your-email-list-with-a-contest-a-case-study/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/building-your-email-list-with-a-contest-a-case-study/#commentsTue, 05 Dec 2017 18:34:12 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1902We’re looking to launch a Kickstarter for a new product in early 2018, so I wanted to start bulking up our mailing list. In this blog post, I’ll go over a giveaway campaign that we ran to collect emails and how we did.

TLDR version: Very poor collection rate of 9 emails and cost around $3-4 per email, but found some good ideas to improve the process.

Our goal: get people to go to our online email collection page, enter their email and opt-in to the mailing list

Process: Offer a entry to win a free Card Caddy 5-pack for people who completed the process above. Offer made via posts on our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). The period was Dec 1-4 (Friday through Monday).

Each of the platforms had a bit different layout to the post, but generally had the text:

“WIN a free Card Caddy 5 pack! Subscribe to our mailing list, then opt in for emails from us. Winners will randomly selected from new members of our mailing list signed up Dec 1-4 https://narrowshill.com/contact“

Advertising: $15 ad set on Facebook. Targeted both sexes, 18-65, with the interests: Parenting, Board games, Card games or Playing card.

Total cost of the promotion: Our cost of the 5-pack plus US shipping is around $10, so overall we’ve got $25 in this effort.

Results: Pretty dismal. We added 9 emails to out list over this time period. Three of these were already highly engaged through our social media accounts, so it really only looks like we got 6 new subscribers. I certainly don’t begrudge our three active supporters an entry and am happy to have another way of reaching them, but an overall cost of $3 to 4 per email is just not cost effective.

Facebook vs Google Analytics

I’ve discussed my skepticism of Facebook’s engagement and click counts in a previous post, and an analysis of the their data versus the Google Analytics report again indicate that Facebook is inflating their counts. Facebook reports 30 link clicks from this ad campaign over the period of Dec 1-4.

Facebook ad report

However, the Google Analytics report shows only 20 clicks from Facebook over this period. Dec 3rd is especially interesting since there are NO clicks at all, but Facebook says there were over 10 from their side. I realize that counting and attributing clicks is not an exact science, but repeated experience with Facebook seems to indicate that their reported clicks are well above what the website analytics records.

Google Analytics Report for Social Media referrals

But, the one positive feature from this promotion was the Instagram engagement. It seemed like a bigger pain for people to enter via Instagram since the active link wasn’t in the post – you either had to go back to the Card Caddy home page, or enter it into a browser or search for the Card Caddy site. I spent nothing on Instagram, but got the most replies to my post and probably the most cost effective click rate.

Next steps: This was definitely not a cost effective way to get emails, but there were some indicators of what would help make it better. Here are some ways I hope to improve the return on these kinds of promotions:

Find a way to make it easier to submit your email. I use MailChimp, and they require an opt-in response once you enter your email through the website. According to my analystics, there were over 50 visits to the “Contact Us” page, so I have feeling that more than 9 people entered their email, but did not respond to the opt-in reply from MailChimp. I may just have to have the form collect the email in a database, then dump that into MailChimp

Try Instagram ads. the engagement there seems to be good, and by paying for an ad, you can have active links in your post.

Make the value proposition more clear. I realized I have not listed the value of the 5 pack in any of the posts. It’s listed on the website for $26, so that may hook some people into giving their email.

Reward current subscribers for referrals. There’s usually not better spokesperson than previous backers and customers, so getting them to get friends and family sign up for our list seems like a good idea. The problem is that it’s really tough to track a new email subscriber to a referral from a current one. Mailchimp does let me see who forwards an email I sent and how many times, so I guess I could make each referral an entry.

Any other ideas you’ve had for a good email collection promotion – love to hear them!

An by the way, the winner of this promotion was exactly who I was looking for. He had just bought a card game and wanted a good case for it. He saw the promoted post on Facebook and entered. So at least I probably brought in one potential backer!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/building-your-email-list-with-a-contest-a-case-study/feed/2email-lists-for-salecardcaddyGW IGFb adCapture GAPlaying Card Shufflers, Part 1https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/playing-card-shufflers-part-1/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/playing-card-shufflers-part-1/#respondFri, 17 Nov 2017 18:32:04 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1807When I’m exhibiting the Card Caddy at trade shows and cons, one of the most common questions we get is “Do you have a card shuffler”? There seems to be a lot of interest in a good automatic shuffler, so in this post, I’m going to propose some aspects of an ideal shuffler and take a look at some older automatic shufflers. In Part 2, I’ll take a look at shufflers that are currently available and see how they stack up. There’s also an accompanying video that shows the methods of shuffling and the shufflers I discuss in this post, too.

Manual shuffling

There’s almost as many ways to shuffle cards as there are to play them. I’m not going to go through in detail all the different ways to shuffle by hand, but I’ll take a stab at categorizing them:

Riffle or dovetail – probably what most people think of for shuffling. You split the deck into two, then interlace the two halves back together by riffling them into one pile. This method takes some practice, and some people may not be able to do it at all. It’s also easier to irreversibly bend the cards with this technique. It’s generally agreed that 7 or so cycles of this method randomizes the deck.

Strip, sift or running cuts – essentially taking chunks or cuts of the deck and changing their relative position. Not much skill for most versions of this method, but does not mix up the cards as well as other ways. The same video linked above says it takes a few thousand cycles of this method to really mix up your cards

Scramble, smoosh or wash – you spread out all the cards face down and mix them around, then push them all back together into a pile. Takes a lot of room and sometimes cards get flipped over or wedged but requires no skill. You should do this process for over a minute to get a good mix.

The ideal automatic shuffler

So you can’t or don’t want to hand shuffle your cards. What features would you want from an automatic shuffler? In general order of importance, here’s what I’d be looking for:

It works! – first and foremost, it had better randomize your deck, and be free from regular mechanical failures.

Doesn’t damage your cards – manual shuffling does put some wear and tear on your cards. There’s a bit of debate on how much this actually is, but an automatic shuffler should at the very least not bend, rip up or dog-ear your cards.

Doesn’t take a long time – about a minute or less, based on the riffle or scramble methods, unless there’s something really great about the shuffler (like it sweeps up all your cards at the end of the hand, shuffles then deals them!)

Low price – How much is a deck of shuffled cards worth to you? Some people like kids or those with joint issues may not be able to shuffle at all, so it’s worth some more money to find an automatic version. There are definitely some multi-$100 versions out there for casinos and gambling clubs, but I’d say most people would be looking to spend less than $20.

Can shuffle different card and deck sizes – For most traditional card players, you’ll probably only encounter Poker- and Bridge-sized cards, but once you get into the tabletop gaming world, there are some more standard card sizes. Also, tabletop and collectible card gamers tend to put their cards in protective sleeves, changing the size and texture of the card. As well, the number of cards being shuffled changes from game-to-game (usually more than a standard 52 card deck). An ideal shuffler would accept the widest range of card and deck sizes

Not loud – we’re starting to get into less important factors here, but noise is a common complaint on some of the automatic shufflers out there

No batteries – Again, maybe not too important, but the perfect shuffler wouldn’t need external power

Portable – some players may want to take their shuffler out and about, so some degree of portability would be ideal.

A couple of vintage shufflers

My grandmother was an avid card player, so I actually had these two around the house. Both of them are what I would consider “assisted shufflers” – they both help you do the riffle-type of shuffle, but you still have to do the work of splitting the deck, loading the shuffler and operating it. The video linked above has a good demo of me using both of these with a couple of different types of cards in each. For both of them, they do help shuffling if you can’t do the riffle method on your own, but they do both have some tendency to jam or throw some cards out of the shuffler.

Metal Canasta shuffler

The metal one is very solid and just has a nice feel to it. The lever swings down and pushes the cards across a riffler and they fall to the bottom in a pile. I think this is the one that I prefer of the two.

Fan-type shuffler

I call this one a fan-type shuffler, just because that’s what is looks like. Here, you put the cards into the two slots, then move them across the riffler and they collect at the bottom. This one seemed to get stuck more and the cards fell out and scattered since there’s no tray to collect them.

And the “Shake Shuffler”

This is a newer shuffler – Hasbro’s Shuffle Shaker – but seems to be discontinued. The most recent date on the product is 2009, and you can only get these on ebay or resellers on Amazon.

Again, the video linked above gives a better demonstration of how it works, but basically, this shuffler does the strip/running cut method. There is a grate in the middle of the shuffler, and by shaking it back and forth, the deck is split into different groups of cards, which then end up in different positions in the deck. As you’d expect, the cards get stuck in the grating a lot, and really doesn’t shuffle any better than the manual strip method. I imagine it was discontinued because of these reasons.

So, these were the shufflers I had around the house at the time – in the next post, I’ll take a loot at some other shufflers that are out there, too.

How do you like to shuffle your cards? Do you have a a favorite automatic shuffler? Let us know!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/playing-card-shufflers-part-1/feed/0Screen-Shot-2014-09-23-at-8.15.49-PMcardcaddyCanasta shufflerfan shuffler.jpg51ve9i83a5lTrade show survival gear, Part 2https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/trade-show-survival-gear-part-2/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/trade-show-survival-gear-part-2/#respondThu, 09 Nov 2017 02:00:00 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1639In a previous post, I wrote about some of stuff I keep in my trade show “go bag”. Here are some more tips and tricks I’ve picked up from my time exhibiting at various shows, cons and fairs.

Getting in and out

Depending on the size and location of your venue, loading your booth in and out can range from a walk in the hall to a logistical nightmare. Most times, you’re allowed to move your own stuff in/out, subject to various rules at each event (make sure to read your exhibitor guide closely for these details). Since I’m thrifty, I like to move myself whenever possible and have set up the transport of the contents to make it easier. First, I try to fit everything I can into standard sized containers. I like these from Walmart. They are well priced, sturdy and stack well with each other. In fact, when I have unpacked them, I usually stack them in the back of the booth, then drape a black sheet over them for a raised shelf for product display.

Booth on a cart

Depending on how much inventory I need for a show, I can usually for everything I need for a 5 or 10 foot by 10 foot booth in three of these footlockers. They fit nicely on a standard handtruck (above) with some room for stuff that doesn’t fit, like my pop-up banners, flooring (if needed) and some other odds and ends. I can roll my whole booth in one or two trips, then collapse the handtruck and tuck it under the table. A place for everything and everything in its place!

Contact collection

You’re at these shows to sell your product, but not everyone may be ready to buy right then and there, so you’ve got to have a good way to collect contact info. For trade shows where most everyone has a business card, I’ve got a really nice solution built-in to my business – I have some returns or factory seconds Card Caddies I use to store and sort business cards from these shows.

Cabinet full of contacts

I can label them by show and type of contact, so it keeps things well organized. Plus, I’ve had more than one person but one after seeing me use the Card Caddy for business cards, so it’s also a tiny bit of extra advertising.

What if you’re at a conference or fair that’s open to the general public and no one has business cards? I’ve tried a series of methods, each with increasing success. Of course, there’s always paper and pen, but there’s a lot of transcription and trouble reading handwriting. Then, I starting giving people my business card, and told them to go to the website and sign up on our email list on the “contact us” page. That never really worked-too many steps and too much hassle for a customer to do. Then we started calling up the website on our tablet and handing it to people to sign up. There were still lots of missed contacts since my email service (MailChimp) requires subscribers to respond to a validation email after they submit it through the site and only about 10% of people who entered their email would validate it. Plus people always seemed to mess up even their own email when typing on the tablet keyboard.

Now I’ve settled into a process that seems to work pretty well. I picked up another tablet, with a keyboard. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy- I got a decent one from Walmart for $70. I set up an offline data collection app that is just a simple form with name, email, and company. I just export the data in CSV then import the emails into MailChimp. I set up the tablet on a turntable so I can spin it around if needed, and have a product video on a loop when it’s not being used. It’s been a good solution so far, and if there’s free WiFi at the venue, I can use it to enter invoice info faster than my POS tablet and even make blog posts like I’m doing now!

Hope these and the other tips help to make your next exhibiting experience a little easier! What are some things you always do or don’t do at your trade shows?

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/trade-show-survival-gear-part-2/feed/016107308_683310328494705_4474689981866215889_ocardcaddy20171012_094311.jpgg20171104_130658.mp4Playing Cards and the Militaryhttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/playing-cards-and-the-military/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/playing-cards-and-the-military/#respondMon, 06 Nov 2017 16:37:17 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=893Looks like Hawkeye and Trapper could have used a Card Caddy back in the Korean War!

Veteran’s day is coming up and as vet myself, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the relationship between playing cards and the military.

The enemy – boredom

There are lots of greatsources on the history of playing cards themselves. Although I’m sure that soldiers and sailors played lots of cards since the mid-1300’s when they first started to enter western culture, it really seems like cards enter deeply into the military lifestyle in the early 1900’s as they are becoming less expensive, more durable and readily available. Cards make a great way for soldiers and sailors to pass the time – they are small and light, there are thousands of possible games and everyone knows at least a few (and even more potential for fun/trouble when you throw in the options for gambling and drinking while playing!).

Card games weren’t limited by national borders – below is a picture of German soldiers from World War One obviously hamming it up for a posed photo, but even cursory searches will bring up a wealth of pictures of soldiers of all nationalities from many time periods all playing cards.

The caption on the next photo says: “Four men of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps playing cards on a dump of trench mortar ammunition (known to British troops as ‘toffee apples’) at Acheux, July 1916. Q 1375”. I think sitting on a pile of ammunition playing a game of cards takes the Card Caddy’s tagline of “Stack your deck – anywhere anytime” to whole new level.

Just so I don’t leave out my Naval brethren, here’s a picture from the modern-day, showing US Navy sailors enjoying a game of cards (looks like Rummy 500).

Cards, even today, are deeply a part of militaries worldwide.

Cards as warfare tools

Given the tight relationship between cards and the military, a couple of examples of cards being used not just as weapons to fight boredom, but as information tools in warfare came to mind.

During WW2, the allies and Bicycle Cards teamed up to produce special playing cards to help Prisoners of War escape and find their way to friendly territory. The special cards were designed so that when soaked in water, they would separate into two cards, with maps showing escape routes on the inner sides of the cards. The special cards were delivered to the prisoners through card packages, and the German guards were not suspicious of an ordinary looking deck of cards.

Custom-printed decks of cards also offer an easy way to get information out to your own troops. The best known example in my mind is the “52 Most Wanted Iraqis”, a custom deck commissioned by the US military during the 2003 Gulf War. The deck had pictures and limited information on the most wanted members of Saddam Hussein’s government and were distributed to troops in order to get the faces and names of these people in front of the soldiers who may encounter them in the field. These types of “ID Decks” have been used back to the Civil War, according to a spokesperson, and are also widely used by police departments who put the details of cold cases or fugitives on the cards, then distribute them to prisoners (also people with lots of time on the their hands).

I’d have to imagine there would be lots of ways cards could be used in espionage, from concealment of cameras and other stuff in a deck box, to encrypting information through a pre-agreed card algorithm, but I couldn’t find any verified examples of any. Maybe another blog post!

Symbolism

With soldiers’ familiarity with cards, it follows that some of the symbols and imagery from them would become adopted by military units. There’s a really great reddit post answering the question “Why are soldiers depicted with playing cards belted to their helmet?” that lays out a number of examples of units adopting card symbology officially and unofficially.

An example of some definitely UNofficial card imagery on a B-52

In particular, the Ace of Spades has become closely connected symbolically with the military. If you’re wondering why the Ace of Spades is always more ornate than the rest of the aces, here’s a succinct answer, here’s a longer one. In popular culture, the Ace of Spades has been considered the “death card” with all of the implications relevant in military actions (luck charms, marking kills, etc). In reality, though, this seems to be another one of those partly hype, partly true urban legends. This article is an excellent history of the Ace of Spades and the “death card” if you’re interested in going deeper (and a bit darker).

Wrap up

Hope you enjoyed my cursory look at the relationship of cards and the military. Do you have stories about cards and the military experience? I’d love to hear them! Or more importantly, do you know of a military member or unit who would like to get a FREE Card Caddy Care Package? I’ve already sent out over 20 care packages with a bunch of Card Caddies, decks of cards, and snacks which are great for card game time to units around the world! I like to think that these packages help that time until these service members come home pass a little more quickly. If you know of a person or unit I should sent one of my care packages to, please email me at chris.nichols@dimesy.com

Thanks to Vets everywhere for your service!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/playing-cards-and-the-military/feed/0mashcardcaddymain_900q201375web_041224-n-4757s-194aceintheholeCare PackageTrade show survival gear, Part 1https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/trade-show-survival-gear-part-1/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/trade-show-survival-gear-part-1/#commentsTue, 24 Oct 2017 16:10:09 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1534During my Card Caddy career, I’ve exhibited at over 20 trade shows, conventions, fairs, etc. So while I’m no expert, I’ve learned some stuff the easy way and some stuff the hard way that may make your next con/show/fair easier or better. Just like the Stormtrooper above, I have a “utility belt” of stuff that I always keep on hand for shows. Let me know if you have some good ideas for making con life easier, too!

Money and transactions

The way I categorize these events, trade shows are more business-to-business, while conventions and fairs are usually more direct-to-consumer. Either way, you’ll need to make monetary transactions, either through cash or credit card (or maybe purchase orders and invoices, too). To keep all of the stuff I need, I really like the First Alert cash box. It has four slots for currency with spring loaded clips, and then enough room for all of my other stuff. It’s sturdy, but small and light enough that I can fit it into my messenger bag to take it to and from the show. If I’m covering a show alone and need to step away from the booth, I can lock it to the table with the cable, or take it with me, depending on the show and how long I’ll be. The lock on the box or cable would never stand up to a determined thief, but the setup is good enough to keep the grab-and-run person from getting my money.

Cash box with lock

On the electronics side, I use a Galaxy Tab on an AT&T data plan with Square as the CC processor. I don’t like relying on the venue’s wifi – the free plan, if available, isn’t usually reliable, and paying for it even for just one show per month is more than the tablet and data plan usually is. Plus, I can use the tablet to take orders and set up invoices for B2B customers when they order at the show or their shop, so having a tablet dedicated to the business is worth it. I’ve also been really happy with Square – their cut seems to be the industry standard, the interface is easy to use and set up, and I get paid on time every time. Make sure to pony up for the chip reader, too – you can be held liable for CC fraud on a customer’s card now and the chip reader makes you less liable. And then there’s the miscellaneous stuff: office items (pens, notepad, rubber bands, paper clips, tape, stapler w/ extra staples, scissors, tape, small multi-tool), a small calculator (faster and easier than using your phone to work out custom deals) and battery/charging kit for the tablet and CC reader.

Inside the cash box

Messenger/sample bag

When I’m going to/from the show each day, walking the floor or going to meetings, I usually have my messenger bag with me. I got three of these custom embroidered with my logo at a local shop – they were less than $30 apiece and have held up well. It would be nice if it were more socially acceptable for men to wear purses, since I like having all of this stuff on hand, but it’s usually just during these shows!

First, I always have a demo Card Caddy with me, the beat-up deck of cards to show as “the problem”, business cards, and copies of my brochure (sell sheet) and price lists (blue folder on the right). Hygiene is really important at these events – both yours and others. One the right, you can see hand sanitizer (especially important after handling lots of cash or shaking hands), skin lotion (after using all the sanitizer!), breath spray and/or gum (lots of literal face-to-face time with people), tissues (allergies or colds) and lip balm (those air conditioned event spaces always dry me out). Then I keep the miscellaneous – pens and paper, my idea notebook, bandaids, advil, spare sunglasses, phone chargers and battery.

As I said above, my cash box fits in the bag well, but so that I don’t have to shift stuff around to get it in and out, I made some dividers for the inside of the bag out of scrap cardboard. The box goes on the left and I can fill the right area with product samples or whatever else and know that the cash box will go in and out easily.

Booth repair/maintenance kit

Nothing ever works out quite like you think, right? I always like to have stuff on hand to fix those inevitable snafus that come up. I keep them in another shoulder bag, mainly so that they are not all over the place and I can just stuff the bag under the table or in a corner when I need it. Some of my essentials are: duct tape (of course!), superglue, zip ties, small bungee cords and fishing line (great for hanging banners), lint roller and fabric shaver (my table covering is felt, so there are always lots of lint balls), napkins or paper towels, multitool and some other extras.

Semper paratus!

One item that I am probably going to order before my next show is one of those collapsible stepstools. Usually when hanging up banners, I am standing on one of those cheap chairs that typically come with your booth and am just waiting for one of them to give way and for me to fall over into the next booth!

That’s it for Part 1. The next post will cover getting in and out of the show, collecting contacts and whatever else I forgot in this one! What are some of the items you never leave home without when going to a con or trade show?

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/trade-show-survival-gear-part-1/feed/122339094_840046766154393_2993408704985557910_ocardcaddy20171010_14235420171010_14263220171010_14351120171010_14373920171010_143111Your product – As Seen on TV?https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/your-product-as-seen-on-tv/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/your-product-as-seen-on-tv/#respondFri, 13 Oct 2017 17:31:33 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1374I’ve been contacted by three Direct Response TV (DRTV) advertising agencies in the past few months with pitches for their services. I had done a DRTV spot for the Card Caddy about a year ago which fell short of expectations, so I knew to be wary, but I’ve been struck by the lack of advice or reviews from the perspective of a small independent product developer. This blog post will reflect my experience with DRTV from this perspective. The TLDR version: as with anything, do your due diligence, get multiple references, and then still be extremely skeptical! But there are plenty of documented cases of DRTV taking an idea from nothing to a household name, so it could be a great opportunity.

DRTV refers to television based advertising where consumers are requested to directly contact the advertiser, usually to purchase the product, via phone or website. Most people know this type of advertising as “infomercials” and it’s still big business – probably around a $250 billion industry. There seem to be 5 to 10 major companies in the field that spend the most on airtime. So that “As Seen on TV” logo that looks vaguely like the good old TV Guide logo isn’t exclusive or official – anyone can use it and there are lots of little variants out there on the logo depending on the company that uses it.

I’ve encountered two classes of DRTV agencies from the perspective of a product developer: product licensors and service providers. The licensors are typically in those 5 to 10 big company range, and they are looking for ideas to license from inventors. They will then pay all of the upfront costs of making the commercial, airing it, producing the product and fulfilling orders. So they basically take all the risk, and provide inventors with a royalty of up to 5% of net sales. There are lots of stories about inventors whose ideas became big hits through this process, like the Bacon Bowl, Eggies, Go Duster and others. Most of the articles cite sales north of a million units of these type of products in the first year of the roll-out. But, your product has to be selected by the licensors, and each one has their own submission and application process. I’ve submitted the Card Caddy to all of these companies I could find, and have gotten 3 or 4 steps in with some of them, but haven’t gotten to the licensing stage with any of them (yet). If you’re interested in finding these types of companies to submit your idea, google something like “top drtv advertisers” or check the link to the 5 or 10 companies above.

The other type of DRTV agency from my perspective are the service providers. I’ll just be upfront and say to be wary of them. From my experience, they contact you to pitch their service, and are very flattering about your product. I’ve had four of these agencies reach out to me, all with a similar pitch, the first one of which I did business with (more on how it went at the end). For around $15-25k, the company will produce a 30-60 second commercial and and air the commercial some set number of times over a set period. They usually will set up a website and phone number to collect orders from the commercial. A licensing deal, purchase order volumes or some sort of future arrangement if certain sales metrics are met is also part of the pitch. They emphasize that this deal is a risk sharing arrangement, where they are putting in resources to match your investment. From my personal experience with one and doing detailed due diligence on the three others, my final evaluation of these types of companies are that they use inventors’ aspirations and inexperience to gamble with your money. If the ad fails (which it often seems to do), I’m not sure how much the agency loses, but you are definitely out that amount. If it hits big, then everyone wins (maybe).

I did business with one these agencies about a year ago, and at best, broke even on the experience. I was happy with the commercial that was produced (linked above), and thought that TV media plan was good enough as a proof of concept. The commercial aired 54 times over a two week period on 4 channels, none of which I had heard of before, but upon research seemed like a good fit for my product (one kid’s channel and three showing classic show reruns). The website and call-in number got minimal orders, but the amount my gross Amazon and website sales were above baseline during the period pretty much paid for the cost of the air time. Having read some more about the DRTV sector, my airing wasn’t on the right channels or enough times to make any meaningful conclusions from. After the campaign had ended, I felt that remorse when you know you had blown money for nothing, but at least I got a decent commercial out of it and had made some sales from it. The company I dealt with was fully complaint with the contract we had – I do want to make that clear. I think my ignorance of the sector and hopes for a big win really made me blind to the risks.

Having this experience under my belt, when the three agencies contacted me over the last month or so, I was much more skeptical and really did my due diligence in depth. I won’t call out the companies in this post – please contact me privately if you’d like any details. They all started with an email that set up a phone conversation and I did the phone conversation with each of them. Some common themes on the initial communications:

Really enthusiastic about my product

Very big hurry to get me to submit samples for their in-house review

All made some sort of comment like “couldn’t you see your product on Lifetime, Oprah, etc” NOT “we’ll get your product on these networks”

everyone made the point of millions of units per year in this industry and the theme of them sharing in the initial risk to get into this opportunity

they were all in the $15-25k range

If the agency had a website in that initial email, I checked it out – two did not have a site in the email. After the initial call, one of these agencies just stopped responding when I asked for a website. The other tried to deflect the request with “I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about us” but did not provide a site after I pressed the issue. There were four or five commercials on their site, all of which were for niche products produced by big established brands. I asked the agency if they had any previous customers I could talk to about their experience and they said it was their policy to keep customers private. I politely thanked this agency for the interest, but would not be doing business with them.

The last agency had a nice website with a good number of products in my sector that looked to be in the same stage of the development cycle as I am. I found six that I wanted to talk about their experience with this company. All of the products looked like something I might buy, had websites, were on Amazon with at least a few reviews, but were nothing I had ever heard of before. I reached out to them through a variety of means – email, FB message, website forms – and only had two respond, but they both had almost an identical story to each other, and my experience with the agency from last year:

Lots of talk about big networks during the sales pitch time, but no specifics on which channels. When the contract is signed and the media plan is put together, the agency says “a small investment like this can only pay for small channels”

Lots of hurry to get the contract signed. The agency cites that this a competitive market and the idea could be stolen, if even you have a patent. Lots of hurry on payments, too – one of the people said the agency wanted them to send a picture of each check payment installment they had just Fedexed

Sales from the commercial airings were minimal. One of the companies reported only 2 sales from the experience.

After getting this feedback and from what I already knew, I politely declined this offer as well.

So, maybe my product, and these other ones I dug into, just aren’t good products that people will buy. That’s definitely something I need to keep in mind as a possibility. But I do feel there is more of a trend that these type of agencies bring in a lot of companies like ours and produce very few, if any, viable DRTV products. Like I said above, they are buying lottery tickets with your money. So, will you see the Card Caddy – or your product – on TV anytime soon? Stay tuned!

]]>https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/10/13/your-product-as-seen-on-tv/feed/0ASOTVcardcaddyGenCon 17 – exhibitor wrap uphttps://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/gencon-17-exhibitor-wrap-up/
https://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/gencon-17-exhibitor-wrap-up/#respondFri, 25 Aug 2017 17:22:18 +0000http://cardcaddy.wordpress.com/?p=1259The Card Caddy got back from exhibiting at Gen Con 50 last week and it was a great con for us. Read on to find out more. TLDR: Great, well run and attended con. Lots of sales direct to customers. Too many announcements over the loudspeakers!

In case you’re not a close follower of the tabletop gaming scene, Gen Con is probably the largest convention dedicated to board games in the US. In its 50th year, Gen Con is growing like crazy, just like the tabletop gaming sector of the Toy and Game Industry. Held in the Indiana Convention center, and now spreading out into the Lucas Oil Stadium and pretty much all of the local hotel meeting spaces, there were over 500 exhibitors and probably over a 100 gaming areas formally set up. Whereas most of the shows we’ve attended over the past few month have been business-to-business, Gen Con is a direct-to-customer show for the exhibitors. So we brought lots of inventory and were ready to sell.

We exhibited at Gen Con last year, so getting in this year was fairly painless. We had to re-up sometime in October, I think. In fact, we got a bit of a “promotion” in booth location by getting into the Family Fun Pavilion. The organizers needed to find exhibitors with totally kid-friendly content to fill this area, and since we are about as innocent as you can get, we got moved closer to one of the entry doors. I don’t think we really noticed any difference of being in the family area vs gen-pop, but being close to the doors (and also the bathrooms) was nice. In February, I think, the housing opens up and I make sure to get our hotel booked right away – I like staying at the hotels next to the stadium since the parking is easy in/out, they have free breakfast and are still close walking distance to the convention center.

We did the 7 hr drive to Indianapolis on the Wednesday before the con started and got there around 1pm. Since we’ve brought our new product lines of Double Deckers and Accessory Packs with us, I had to strap on the travel pod to the top of the ol’ family truckster, but overall the trip was uneventful. My stepson Alex has his learners permit and is always anxious for some wheel time, so that also helped to break up the trip.

Playing cards and driving – yet another use for the Card Caddy! (not recommended)The Convention Center has a pretty good unloading system for personal vehicles – you have to check in at a staging yard about a 1/4 mile from the center, and they will send you to the appropriate loading dock when there’s space. We didn’t have to wait at all, and got unloaded and set up in a few hours. We got to meet Matt Holden from the Indie Game Alliance (which I recommend joining if you’re a small game (or accessory) designer) while we were setting up, too.

Pretty standard booth set up with my stepson Alex ready to deal!We retired to the hotel and were ready for opening day on Thursday. One the first day, the exhibit hall opened an hour early for the Very Important Gamers, and we were there, but it turned out that the the VIGs were there to get specific games first or before they sold out, so we didn’t do a lot of sales then.

But the rest of the con was great for sales – steady to heavy traffic past the booth pretty much all the time. Every day, there was a crowd waiting to get into the hall when it opened to the public – the organizers started a chant “We will not run, We will not run” to keep the crowd from stampeding when the door opened.

The barbarians at the gates, ready for the exhibit hall to openNot too much to report on the individual days – it was pretty much the same deal of making the pitch to everyone we could grab who walked by, and then making the sale if the pitch worked. There were some day-to-day and hour-to-hour variations that I picked up when I looked at my Point of Sale report from the con.

Dollars of sales per time of day (all four days)Dollars of sales per day

The top graph shows the sales plotted for the time of day, cumulative over the whole con. We were definitely noticing that post-lunch slump by Saturday and that gradual tailing off at the end of the day. When looking at the bottom graph showing days of the week, keep in mind that the hall is open two hours less on Sunday than the rest of the days. I was surprised that Saturday’s sales were less than Friday since attendance was higher then, and was expecting that Sunday would match either Sat/Fri since so many people we pitched Th-Sat said they would be back on Sunday to do their buying. Regardless, we’re really happy with the sales we did there. There are also lots of other benefits to exhibiting at these type of shows, too, which are tough to measure but still very valuable.

One of the benefits is getting to hear from customers what they want in future products. Here is what we heard:

Options for mini-cards (Euro games, Xwing damage cards and others): we’re working this with a divider that will slide into a Card Caddy to split it to fit the minis.

The Triple Decker: This version will hold 100 double sleeved cards and was really designed for the MTG Commander/EDH player, but as tabletop games and expansions grow, so do the decks, and people are really interested in this one

The Dice Tower: Tons of interest in a Dice Tower (top part of the image linked) – I’m often surprised at the level of enthusiasm here since there are sooo many dice towers out there already. Ours does collapse down and fit all of the Card Caddy products, so that’s pretty cool, I think.

The Card Shoe: not many people noticed this sitting in our “coming soon” area of the table, but those that did really dug the idea. I’ve got to get some pix and videos up of this, but the idea is a standard Vegas-style card shoe, that then collapses down to a portable box, that also fits all of the Card Caddy accessories. I think I should be able to build it to hold 6 decks worth of cards -we’ll see if that comes to fruition, but I think it could be a real hit.

A card shuffler: I actually do have some plans in my head about how a Card Caddy compatible card shuffler could work. Stay tuned on that one – card shufflers are notoriously tough to build and sell for a marketable price.

Also great was all of the coplayers that we got to pose in front of the booth – lots of great social media content!So, we had lots of great interactions with our current and hopefully future customers. We also got to meet a lot of Kickstarter backers who were able to pick up their rewards and save me on some shipping to them (thanks to you all for that!). But, this was not the con to meet and make deals with other business entities, unless you had already set up some time in advance. We did drag in a few game stores (we collected cards from 10 and had one that made a retailer purchase on site) and made a couple of distributor and major game manufacturer contacts, but everyone who had a booth was way too busy either demoing or selling their product to talk business-to-business. And speaking of business, that would be my only major complaint about hos the show was run – there were way too many (advertising) announcements over the PA system in the hall. Everytime they made one of these announcements, you had to stop your pitch, or you couldn’t start one while customers walked on by. They were becoming aggravating and detracted from the show, I thought.

So, before we knew it, it was Sunday afternoon and time to wrap it up. The loading process was similar to unloading – I would recommend going over to the staging area as soon as you can be ready if you’re in a hurry to get out of there – I got there around 4:30, had to wait about 30 minutes to get checked in, and by the time I left the staging yard, there was a line of about 50 people just waiting for check in. But we got loaded back up, considerable lighter, although the car seemed just as tightly packed as when we got there – go figure…

Overall, Gen Con is a “must do” if you’re in the tabletop game sector and you can make it. We barely even got to see the rest of the con outside the exhibit hall, but there is tons to do both at the con, and in Indy. Some cons are a real toss up if they’re worth it or not, but with the direct-to-customer sales here, it was definitely worth the expense, and we’ll be back next year!

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